It is still a fact that these moves dealt a blow to women’s chances of overcoming their subordinate social position. Capitalism had presented the potential for equality, but that equality could not come to fruition within the system. In the interests of the reproduction of labour power, women were isolated and atomised in the home. Their work was seen as serving their husbands and their families. They were denied financial independence. This “ideal” was never the reality for all working class women; many always engaged in wage labour. But the ruling ideas propagated the notion of the family as sacred, projecting the stereotype of the bourgeois family on to the working class as a means of ensuring reproduction. And the stereotype was what working class women and men accepted as the “norm” even if it did not match their own personal reality. Even today, as the development of capitalism has drawn the majority of women into the labour market, this view of women has not disappeared although it has been severely eroded. Attitudes to women, and of women to themselves, have advanced enormously under the combined impact of control over contraception and entry into the workforce. The way changed material conditions have changed attitudes is itself an argument against seeing oppression as the result of some mystical male ideological hold that never changes.
(...) To suggest otherwise is to deny that material conditions can change ideas or structures of society. Sheila Rowbotham makes the same mistake when she argues that the capitalist family contains elements of feudal forms of production and so is a “mode within a mode”.19 Yet vestiges of pre-capitalist society that endure within capitalism do not remain at all the same as previously. The monarchy is a remnant of feudal society but has been so totally transformed by capitalism that it bears really little relation to its previous role. So with the family. It may look the same (although even that is dubious) but its role and functions, its foundations have been transformed by capital. Reproduction through the family is not a separate mode, but part of the superstructure of capitalism. Abolition of the capitalist system – a revolutionary overthrow of society – means that the capitalist system of reproduction, the family, cannot survive intact.
(...) The Marxist theory of the family tries to explain women’s continued oppression in the context of women’s role as childbearer and rearer. Hartmann claims that Marxism is ‘sex-blind’; in other words can explain why people are in certain places but cannot explain why these people are women. Yet the theory does precisely that. It locates women’s oppression historically, or locates its continued existence in the individual responsibility for reproduction, which in turn structures the whole of women’s lives. It also puts a solution to that problem in terms of a socialism which would begin to break down both the material conditions which create women’s oppression, and the ideas which have arisen from them – ideas with which we are so familiar, about the family and childcare being natural, women in the home being natural. It can do so by switching responsibility for childcare from the individual to society as a whole. That on its own would open up a new world for millions of women and allow us to behave as equals in a new society.
(...) The feeling is that nothing can be done, so all we can do is sort out our own ideas. Consequently, arguments about changing the whole of society are replaced by exhortations to change our own lifestyles. Instead of activity we are confronted with an abstract moralism which demands that the small number of men (and women) who accept the ideas of women’s liberation purge themselves of ‘deviations’ as a substitute for changing society. The logic is that if we change the attitudes of men we can change the world – as though it were men, not capitalism, which is the problem. It is from these ideas that the theory of patriarchy has developed and which now in turn reinforces these ideas.
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
lecture 2, "the paris commune and its legacy"
john merriman
----
hung over Europe for 20, 30 years following it -- "in my view," the massacre that followed the commune anticipated the 20th century, where you became guilty for simply who you were (you were guilty if you were left in paris)
it was the largest massacre until the armenian genocide (in europe, only?)
----
what was it?
has to be placed in two contexts
(1) in the context of the regime of napoleon the third -- which lasted from 1852-1870 (when he was rounded up by the Prussians). in the late 1860s, there was a revival of republican, socialist, and anarchist organizations -- in 1868, the emperor legalizes public meetings, and you had these in cafes and large warehouses. people were agitating for democratization, etc. -- so, a wave of political mobilzation.
in 1870s, there was a wave of strikes, which had previously been illegal--unions would in fact be illegal until 1881.
(2) the franco-prussian war, napoleon the third gets suckered into a war without any allies at all, against otto von bismarck (the prussian chancellor). it involves the candidacy of a royal family member for the candidacy of france, which would have left the empire surrounded by the prussians. napoleon protests vigorously, and his ambassador abuses bismarck's envoy(!). bismarck reveals to the european world that napoleon had earlier tried to make a deal, intolerable to the british.
so, in sum, they go to war, in the summer of 1870 against prussia, expecting to win. he was, though, "blown out"
----
on september 4th, 1870, a crowd storms down town hall, and want to prolong resistance against the prussian army, which is routing the french. napoleon the third is very sick anyway, soon to die, he is captured in the battle of sedan and sent packing to britain.
there are those who want to keep fighting--one of the demands of prussia (german empire will be proclaimed in late january, in versailles) is that there be a huge indemnity that the french will have to pay. and that alsace and loren, the eastern, german-speaking provinces, would be annexed by germany (and these were two of the most prosperous, industrialized provinces of france)
so, in sum, people in paris find themselves surrounded. there is a wall around the city, keeping out the german troops. elsewhere, resistance is sparse--in metz, in october, a general capitulates to bismarck.
----
to be sure, there were lots of crowds in paris who were shouting for war, which was surprising, in a sense. but the siege goes on, and on.
paris changes appearences--military dress, uniforms become increasingly visible.
there is the problem of food, how to feed all these people. you have enough for only a month, or so (you are fine in terms of drink, b/c of wine cellars). they use balloons! a symbol of liberty, but presumably this is not exactly sufficient. (there were 65 baloon flights, carrying about 20,000 pounds. pigeons are used to fly messages out, germans bring in falcons to munch the pigeons!)
there were some massacres, in the north-east, but nothing like paris would see in 1914, or 1939-1940.
the national guard from the outskirts took refuge, so a bit like a medieval siege.
you have 2,000,000 people, in total (a smattering of foreigners). the population begins to eat animals--dogs, rats and cats. canine butchers replace horse butchers, animals in the zoo were eaten, etc.
bismark had projected that the siege would end, eventually -- but paris creates a committee of sobriety, and encourages people to eat healthy!? these are the fancy folk.
----
it ceased being funny, of course. hunger sets in, even if it was nothing like the siege of leningrad, where 1,000,000 died -- but there were people dying, etc. and venereal disease was rampant, as was drukenness, mental illnessess.
attempts to break out do not work. (there is a contest to see "how we get out"? two suggestions: (1) prostitutes are a resource for paris, they should be used to seduce and poision prussian soldiers. (2) take the orchestras of paris and teach them to play german music--one day they would march out and play this music, with a huge trojan horse behind it!)
----
as things are going downhill, people start to say we must fight, but we need to unite to imagine a new world. in january 1871, a red sign is put up (red was illegal between 1849 and 1851, because it was believed to excite people!), saying "make way for the commune."
----
france capitulates at the end of january 1871 -- the prussian cavalry trot down the champs d'elysses symbolically clean up the stones, etc., and france is all set to lose the war. france has a provisional government, much of the provinces return a monarchist assembly. the landlords come back to paris, and tell the people to pay back money with interest (pay back the indemnity).
and so people are incredibly angry.
theirs, expecting paris to rise, possbily, sends troops to mon matre(sp.?), because the national guard of paris has still got its guns. these troops go to disarm the national guard, but the guard is alerted--they take two commanders from the troops, and they shoot them.
thiers is now ready to "get these bastards."
and now, paris is surrounded again, but by troops of the provisional government.
---
and so the commune begins (march 18, 1871). it will last until the 2nd of may, 1871. (lenin calls this the "festival of the oppressed")
so, for the first time, ordinary parisians find themselves masters of their own lives (the population of the city is swollen with political refugees). as in the french revolution, and 1848, clubs of women begin to form, demanding their rights.
all sorts of impressive social legislation is passed. (secular education system, nurseries for women workers, uniform contracts for female unions, ban night-baking).
this also explains, in part, the viciousness of the massacre of ordinary working women. they were seen as "uppity." many of the important communards are women.
you have the jacobins (republican socialists from the revolutionary tradition), you have the anarchists, you have moderat republicans (who simply desire more liberty vis-a-vis the centralized state), you have moderate socialists.
there are debates, meetings, arguments, etc., as the guns draw nearer.
there were communes in other cities, as well, with a variety of demands. paris keeps waiting for these armies of citizens to come and rescue it.
----
within paris, you have poorer people invading the fancy areas, for the first time as independent citizens.
an artist calls for the tearing down of the statue of napoleon, as a symbol of centralized oppression.
for once they had won.
they had to defend paris, of course. cannons, they have. they build these huge barricades, a tradition that stretched back to the 16th century (of course, you can build barricades across smaller streets, but not really across big boulevards--and that was part of the rebuilding of paris in the 1850s and 1860s).
----
who were the communards?
when revolutions are victorious, of course, everyone says "i was there!"
here, you have a body count, of more than 15,000 people. they were the ordinary parisians who couldn't get out, basically -- they were the poor socialists, anarchists, republicans, etc. their defence of paris reflects tensions between urban and conservative, rural france--the army that they were fighting was largely recruited from rural areas.
and so the commune is basically proletarian--people from the working quarters. artisans, craftsmen, domestic servants, etc. and they were trying to imagine a world in which they could rule.
prof argues it reflects the artisinal base of the french economy at that time.
the myth of the commune--for the conservatives, this was the "fury of hell", those who rose up to slay their social betters. for the republicans, this was a defense of the republic against the monarchy, restored (which is partly true, of course).
for marx, lenin--this was armageddon for the ruling class. though not marx's industrial working-class, of course, but a very different kind of working-class (semi-proletarianized, prof is arguing). this of course informs the "breaking of the chains" argument; testing the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
----
the most important result, however, in prof's opinion, was the massacre itself.
the troops came in through the western gate--they use the boulevards that had been built by napoleon the third as a way of getting to the working-class areas (those areas that had always risen up). hausmann, of course, was the man who had plowed through working-class neighborhoods, that had once lain where those boulevards now are. he did it to bring more light, to bring more air, to free the flow for capital, and because you can't build barricades across the boulevards.
so the troops come pouring in, across boulevards that had been built in the 1850s and 1860s. and the damage was staggering.
and then the women were put on trial--there was a rumor that women had been burning down fancy houses. and so this rumor was part of the fear of "uppity women." and they squished them like grapes.
they shot them all.
in the end, there was a paris in which everybody had been guilty.
chimney sweepers were executed because they had charcoal on their cheeks; they would rip of your shirts, to see if you had any bruises from recoiling rifles; it wasn't a "neutral" massacre, they went to the radical areas, and that's where they went in and massacred the populations.
"why don't you get over this?" this was the ultimate lesson of the commune, which would hang over europe. it was a sign that the state was strong, and can be vicious. don't let anyone tell you that the victims of terrorism are equal, in number, to the victims of state terrorism. but this was the real lesson--the state was growing in power with napoleon, unification. the state could strike back with unparalleled savagery. and that's what happened at the commune.
minimum 15,000 died, probably closer to 25,000. (when they did the census in 1872, in paris, there were 10,000 less shoemakers than there had been before--an extraordinarily radical trade, don't forget). flames engulfed the bodies, they were gone, lost to history.
amnesty for the communards would come in 1879. but the massacre hung like a shadow over french and european politics, for years and years.
john merriman
----
hung over Europe for 20, 30 years following it -- "in my view," the massacre that followed the commune anticipated the 20th century, where you became guilty for simply who you were (you were guilty if you were left in paris)
it was the largest massacre until the armenian genocide (in europe, only?)
----
what was it?
has to be placed in two contexts
(1) in the context of the regime of napoleon the third -- which lasted from 1852-1870 (when he was rounded up by the Prussians). in the late 1860s, there was a revival of republican, socialist, and anarchist organizations -- in 1868, the emperor legalizes public meetings, and you had these in cafes and large warehouses. people were agitating for democratization, etc. -- so, a wave of political mobilzation.
in 1870s, there was a wave of strikes, which had previously been illegal--unions would in fact be illegal until 1881.
(2) the franco-prussian war, napoleon the third gets suckered into a war without any allies at all, against otto von bismarck (the prussian chancellor). it involves the candidacy of a royal family member for the candidacy of france, which would have left the empire surrounded by the prussians. napoleon protests vigorously, and his ambassador abuses bismarck's envoy(!). bismarck reveals to the european world that napoleon had earlier tried to make a deal, intolerable to the british.
so, in sum, they go to war, in the summer of 1870 against prussia, expecting to win. he was, though, "blown out"
----
on september 4th, 1870, a crowd storms down town hall, and want to prolong resistance against the prussian army, which is routing the french. napoleon the third is very sick anyway, soon to die, he is captured in the battle of sedan and sent packing to britain.
there are those who want to keep fighting--one of the demands of prussia (german empire will be proclaimed in late january, in versailles) is that there be a huge indemnity that the french will have to pay. and that alsace and loren, the eastern, german-speaking provinces, would be annexed by germany (and these were two of the most prosperous, industrialized provinces of france)
so, in sum, people in paris find themselves surrounded. there is a wall around the city, keeping out the german troops. elsewhere, resistance is sparse--in metz, in october, a general capitulates to bismarck.
----
to be sure, there were lots of crowds in paris who were shouting for war, which was surprising, in a sense. but the siege goes on, and on.
paris changes appearences--military dress, uniforms become increasingly visible.
there is the problem of food, how to feed all these people. you have enough for only a month, or so (you are fine in terms of drink, b/c of wine cellars). they use balloons! a symbol of liberty, but presumably this is not exactly sufficient. (there were 65 baloon flights, carrying about 20,000 pounds. pigeons are used to fly messages out, germans bring in falcons to munch the pigeons!)
there were some massacres, in the north-east, but nothing like paris would see in 1914, or 1939-1940.
the national guard from the outskirts took refuge, so a bit like a medieval siege.
you have 2,000,000 people, in total (a smattering of foreigners). the population begins to eat animals--dogs, rats and cats. canine butchers replace horse butchers, animals in the zoo were eaten, etc.
bismark had projected that the siege would end, eventually -- but paris creates a committee of sobriety, and encourages people to eat healthy!? these are the fancy folk.
----
it ceased being funny, of course. hunger sets in, even if it was nothing like the siege of leningrad, where 1,000,000 died -- but there were people dying, etc. and venereal disease was rampant, as was drukenness, mental illnessess.
attempts to break out do not work. (there is a contest to see "how we get out"? two suggestions: (1) prostitutes are a resource for paris, they should be used to seduce and poision prussian soldiers. (2) take the orchestras of paris and teach them to play german music--one day they would march out and play this music, with a huge trojan horse behind it!)
----
as things are going downhill, people start to say we must fight, but we need to unite to imagine a new world. in january 1871, a red sign is put up (red was illegal between 1849 and 1851, because it was believed to excite people!), saying "make way for the commune."
----
france capitulates at the end of january 1871 -- the prussian cavalry trot down the champs d'elysses symbolically clean up the stones, etc., and france is all set to lose the war. france has a provisional government, much of the provinces return a monarchist assembly. the landlords come back to paris, and tell the people to pay back money with interest (pay back the indemnity).
and so people are incredibly angry.
theirs, expecting paris to rise, possbily, sends troops to mon matre(sp.?), because the national guard of paris has still got its guns. these troops go to disarm the national guard, but the guard is alerted--they take two commanders from the troops, and they shoot them.
thiers is now ready to "get these bastards."
and now, paris is surrounded again, but by troops of the provisional government.
---
and so the commune begins (march 18, 1871). it will last until the 2nd of may, 1871. (lenin calls this the "festival of the oppressed")
so, for the first time, ordinary parisians find themselves masters of their own lives (the population of the city is swollen with political refugees). as in the french revolution, and 1848, clubs of women begin to form, demanding their rights.
all sorts of impressive social legislation is passed. (secular education system, nurseries for women workers, uniform contracts for female unions, ban night-baking).
this also explains, in part, the viciousness of the massacre of ordinary working women. they were seen as "uppity." many of the important communards are women.
you have the jacobins (republican socialists from the revolutionary tradition), you have the anarchists, you have moderat republicans (who simply desire more liberty vis-a-vis the centralized state), you have moderate socialists.
there are debates, meetings, arguments, etc., as the guns draw nearer.
there were communes in other cities, as well, with a variety of demands. paris keeps waiting for these armies of citizens to come and rescue it.
----
within paris, you have poorer people invading the fancy areas, for the first time as independent citizens.
an artist calls for the tearing down of the statue of napoleon, as a symbol of centralized oppression.
for once they had won.
they had to defend paris, of course. cannons, they have. they build these huge barricades, a tradition that stretched back to the 16th century (of course, you can build barricades across smaller streets, but not really across big boulevards--and that was part of the rebuilding of paris in the 1850s and 1860s).
----
who were the communards?
when revolutions are victorious, of course, everyone says "i was there!"
here, you have a body count, of more than 15,000 people. they were the ordinary parisians who couldn't get out, basically -- they were the poor socialists, anarchists, republicans, etc. their defence of paris reflects tensions between urban and conservative, rural france--the army that they were fighting was largely recruited from rural areas.
and so the commune is basically proletarian--people from the working quarters. artisans, craftsmen, domestic servants, etc. and they were trying to imagine a world in which they could rule.
prof argues it reflects the artisinal base of the french economy at that time.
the myth of the commune--for the conservatives, this was the "fury of hell", those who rose up to slay their social betters. for the republicans, this was a defense of the republic against the monarchy, restored (which is partly true, of course).
for marx, lenin--this was armageddon for the ruling class. though not marx's industrial working-class, of course, but a very different kind of working-class (semi-proletarianized, prof is arguing). this of course informs the "breaking of the chains" argument; testing the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
----
the most important result, however, in prof's opinion, was the massacre itself.
the troops came in through the western gate--they use the boulevards that had been built by napoleon the third as a way of getting to the working-class areas (those areas that had always risen up). hausmann, of course, was the man who had plowed through working-class neighborhoods, that had once lain where those boulevards now are. he did it to bring more light, to bring more air, to free the flow for capital, and because you can't build barricades across the boulevards.
so the troops come pouring in, across boulevards that had been built in the 1850s and 1860s. and the damage was staggering.
and then the women were put on trial--there was a rumor that women had been burning down fancy houses. and so this rumor was part of the fear of "uppity women." and they squished them like grapes.
they shot them all.
in the end, there was a paris in which everybody had been guilty.
chimney sweepers were executed because they had charcoal on their cheeks; they would rip of your shirts, to see if you had any bruises from recoiling rifles; it wasn't a "neutral" massacre, they went to the radical areas, and that's where they went in and massacred the populations.
"why don't you get over this?" this was the ultimate lesson of the commune, which would hang over europe. it was a sign that the state was strong, and can be vicious. don't let anyone tell you that the victims of terrorism are equal, in number, to the victims of state terrorism. but this was the real lesson--the state was growing in power with napoleon, unification. the state could strike back with unparalleled savagery. and that's what happened at the commune.
minimum 15,000 died, probably closer to 25,000. (when they did the census in 1872, in paris, there were 10,000 less shoemakers than there had been before--an extraordinarily radical trade, don't forget). flames engulfed the bodies, they were gone, lost to history.
amnesty for the communards would come in 1879. but the massacre hung like a shadow over french and european politics, for years and years.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
notes on capital
chapter 15: machinery and large-scale industry
sections 6-10
(566): nominibus mollire licet mala -- "it is proper to lighten evils with words" (ovid)
(568-569): in this critique of the bourgeois economists, marx alludes to an understanding of machinery as emancipatory, providing that its implementation is not overseen by capitalism. this does, though, leave open many questions about how a socialist society implements machinery. is it gradual? if it's gradual how does it remain competitive? how is it not alienating? etc., etc.
(571): the advent of cotton-spinning "promote[d], as if in a hot house, the growing of cotton in the United States, and with it the African Slave Trade." an example, if one was needed, of the way in which capitalism intensified slavery, rather than simply succeeding it. (in 1790, 697,000 slaves in US; in 1861, four million).
(571-572): a bit about the demands of the wool industry and the consequent conversion of arable land into pasture for sheep, which is critical precisely because, as sayre argued, it demonstrates that little is 'natural' (as in, outside of history). or, better put, nature has to be understood historically; in this case, the relation of man to land (in this case, the de-population of rural areas) cannot be understood outside of technological advance and new systems of production. in other words, man, in england and ireland, did not meet natural limits, but limits imposed upon nature by specific histories of 'progress'.
(574): in essence, section 6 responds to those apologists who see in machinery the means by which more and more employment will be made available to laboreres (as, in short, machinery stimulates general economic growth). marx's response is unequivocal: by and large, this stimulation is negligible. there will be further growth, he admits, but this will be insignificant in relation to the general impact of machinery on labor, as well as itself being prey to the later impact of machinery (as in, if machine implementation in one branch of industry stimulates another, we can still expect it to be a matter of time before machinery pervades the latter). he ends, then, with an interesting summary of recent, contemporary growth of the servant class in industrial britain, which has relevance for third world nations today, of course. for if it truly is the case that machinery requires a "larger and larger part of the working class to be employed unproductively," (can we think of the service sector in these terms?) then it is impossible to understand the plight of the current servant classes of the third world without recourse to 'labor-saving' technology. in other words, marx's attentiveness to this question of the relationship between technology and labor absorption should make us critically aware in the present: is it possible to imagine a way to limit technological advance so as to deal with the far more relatively numerous masses in the homes and kitchens of the indigenous bourgeoisie in the third world? how will this be accomplished, while still being competitive to the extent of being sustainable? are these the right questions?
(577): "finally, we have considered this question entirely apart from the fact that everywhere, except in the metallurgical industries, young persons (under 18), women and children form by far the most preponderant element in the factory personnel"--this is the critical 'other side' of the story of the industrial revolution, and neglected, i think, in accounts of women's liberation that give explanatory power to WWII. what did this mean for women's liberation? specifically, why was it the case that this large-scale employment of women did not result, in england, in a consciousness of liberation in the way that it did in america during WW2? of course there's a lot of history that i have yet to learn about both... (namely, what is the story of the english women's movement and its relation to industrial capitalism? what was the role of women in the US industrial revolution (the mills in massachusetts, for example)?)
(578): once more, a martial metaphor to explain industrial competition.
(579): marx, again, was fully aware of the gutting of india's handicraft cotton production, and its conversion into a site for producing raw material (cotton, wool, hemp, jute, indigo).
(579-580): quite standard development of underdevelopment narrative; in other words, quite clearly a dialectical (not linear) narrative of how capitalism advances.
(582): here, marx draws a link between the global extension of capitalism and the frequency of crisis. in other words, there seems to be a link between the scope of the capitalist market--the space over which it has expanded--and the frequency (and clarity) of the crises that afflict it. this, no doubt, is properly theorized in harvey and others. but we can add that it is probably not so much the fact that space is a source of new contradictions (indeed, harvey suggests that expansion into as-yet virgin areas is often the 'fix'), but rather that it is a vehicle for the consolidation of market relations (which clarifies, in a real sense, the dynamics producing crisis).
(588, fn 67): something made clear throughout this chapter is that the fact that the decreasing rate of surplus value must be compensated by absolute increases in capitalist production (by increases in the mass of surplus value) gives capitalism its relentlessly expansive character. innovation must happen, but alongside expansion. both are, simultaneously, survival strategies for individual and system.
(588-589): marx comments here on the way in which specific technical innovations undo certain divisions of labor pioneered in the manufacturing/handicraft era. he uses the example of adam smith, and his example of ten men making sewing-needles. the general importance of this passage, i suggest, is that it raises again the question of how machinery imposes objective requirements on the organization of production, which are of a quite different nature from the divisions of labor that preceded them. in other words, it is wrong to see, as feldstein via smith implied, that the progressively more extensive division of labor is the driver of increased productivity--rather, machinery intervenes in a quite decisive way, disrupting what is a very alluring linear story to reveal contradictions (advances with retreats). (see also 590, where marx writes about how the 'new division of labor' requires exclusively 'cheap labor' (i.e., women and children), quite in contrast to the 'old division of labor' in the handicrafts and even manufacture).
(593): "they become rough, foulmouthed boys, before Nature has taught them that they are women"--i suppose this is excusable, given context and intent.
(596): again, an explicit critique of the linear liberal.
(597): here, in the employment of child labor, we remember the contingency of the definition of childhood. in other words, appraising the dialectical relationship of environment (i.e., the factory) to the underlying biology is crucial to understanding the mendacity of 'capitalist anthropology'. (see also 599, where sociobiology can make little sense of parents pushing their children into brutal forms of employment).
(601): marx's argument, derived from the calculus he establishes for deciding on the efficacy of machinery, is that, in any given industry, there comes a point when increasing productivity through cheating labor, employing women/children, etc., is no longer viable (largely because demand has become so extensive). instead, capitalists turn to the machine. one question, in response, is how does this match on to the argument that the machine itself facilitates the entrance of women/children (he later clarifies some complexity, in that young children are removed but "the new machine-minders are exclusively girls and young women"? but i think that is a historical question, which requires one only to look more carefully at the chronology of their entry, rather than a theoretical conundrum. secondly, there seems to be an underlying dynamic of capital accumulation involved; in other words, you need a certain amount of capital to be able to invest in whole-scale transformation of production; a amount of disposable capital that may not be available in immature industries.
(601): again, looking to the past to better understand the present: "the fearful increase in death from starvation during the last ten years in london runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing"
(604): an important passage on the unsteadiness governing the transition from pre-factory forms to the factory system. specifically, marx here is arguing that the uneven implementation of the factory system in various branches of industry, affects dramatically (in a way that makes more inhumane) the non-factory forms of production that are linked to this technical advance. in other words, much like capitalism seizes on pre-capitalist forms and transforms them, here the factory form of production exacerbates the madness of pre-factory forms. in this way, the ascent of the factory system is accompanied by "a totally changed and disorganized" series of non-factory forms of production, which themselves "overdo all the horrors of the factory system." there is a lingering question about how to judge this transition, as marx seems to be arguing that the transitional forms are "worst" (not unlike slavery under capitalism, i suppose).
(604-605): argument here is fairly straightforward, yet important for legislation to check the excesses of contemporary capitalisms in the third world. in essence, marx is suggesting that the factory acts hastened the mechanization of production, insofar as they prohibited manufacture/domestic industry from the quick fixes of "unlimited exploitation of cheap labor-power." to compete, they had to raise productivity by the books. this has interesting consequences, when extrapolated to the case of child labor in the third world; insofar as it is true that more smaller factories/workplaces sustain these practices than larger ones (how true?), one can imagine proper legislation facilitating the concentration of capital in the hands of larger-scale industry (made explicit by marx in a passage on page 607). this dynamic, of course, has its own consequences. (anyway i think all this requires more empirical investigation, before it can be applied to explain today).
(607): a need to discipline the worker--to wean him from his "irregular habits"
(608): this is important, precisely because it prefigures what is done far too infrequently when studying "booms & busts"--namely, looking at crises from the eyes of labor, and assessing their consequences thusly.
(612): the earlier point about bourgeois legality being unable to regulate the internal order of a factory here resurfaces (and this quite aside from questions of autocracy at work). here marx offers an example of the impossibility of regulating the architecture of production: the factory acts could not re-organize the spatial structures of production, lest they "strike at the very roots of the capitalist mode of production," which is really it's freedom to purchase and consume labor-power in whatever way it pleases. put differently, the spatiality of this freedom here becomes important, insofar as it seems "impossible to impose [any] rule on capital" in this regard. in a sense, the contradiction immanent in the dual freedom of labor (the freedom to dispose of him/herself, but also the freeing of him/her from the means of production) here reappears as a contradiction in the legality of productive activity: the bourgeoisie claim the latter in the form of their property rights, yet thereby expose the fallacy of the former, insofar labor is revealed to be thoroughly subordinate to capital's will. "between equal rights, force decides."
(617): there's a dynamism to modern industry, marx is arguing, that is not present in all previous modes of production. whereas those were "essentially conservative," modern industry cannot survive without constantly "transforming not only the technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process." this is of course important to the chronological questions of early industrial britain (progressive de-skilling, for example), aside from being wholly true with respect to the madness of contemporary capitalism. again, dialectics, not linearity. BUT, critically, marx here, in one of those rare moments, hints at what socialist harnessing of large-scale industry would achieve. at the bottom, he writes of how capitalism channels the dynamism required by industry (the "fluidity of functions, the mobility of the worker") into a form that does away with "all fixity and security" for the worker. the challenge for socialism, then, is this: how to organize production in large-scale industry such that the mobility is emancipating, rather than exploitative (there is, of course, the ecological challenge, but that's quite separate). all this is made explicit on page 618, where marx writes directly (well, almost) of the "partially developed individual" being replaced by "the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions [required by large-scale industry] are different modes of activity he takes up in turn."
(619): more of the same attempt to prefigure socialist organization of production--and indeed, a making explicit of the dialectical approach: no necessary connection, in other words, between industry and alienation. in fact, it proves, on this account, a necessary condition for emancipation.
(620): quoting children's employment comission of 1866 (for the sociobiologists): "against no persons do the children of both sexes so much require protection as against their parents."
(621): toward a "higher form of the family:" again, an excellent explication of a concrete issue in which we can both lament the loss of all that is "fixed and frozen" (as is critical) without fearing the future (as is necessary).
(621): "since here the worker exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the worker."
(621): clarifying chronology: factory acts enable general transition to machine-system, simultaneously heightening (in a real sense) the misery of those branches of industry left unregulated (domestic industry, manufacture, handicrafts).
(625-626): of course, in noting the disjuncture between what's enshrined in the letter of the law and what applies, marx (or engels, in this case) registers the classic contradiction of battles over the integrity of laws. indeed, we need to look no further than the UN declaration of human rights.
(635): a key passage, especially as regards the question of the revolutionary potential of the informal working-class. because here marx is tracing the increasing revolutionary capacities of the industrial working-class to the obliteration of spatially isolated small-scale workshops (those "ancient and transitional forms"). as this concentration of workers replaces the prevailing "partially hidden dominion of capital" with an awareness of what exactly workers ought to hold against this world, it "generalizes the direct struggle." it should be clear, though, that none of these conditions exist in the contemporary third world in any significant capacity. in that sense, fanon's command to concentrate on the peasantry needs to be re-issued, today, in the form of a demand to understand and organize the informal sector (the lumpen sectors). what remains to be studied, of course, are the imperfections of this general narrative; are there any ways in which the modern conjuncture opens up as-yet-unforseen possibilities of revolt? or is it really true that davis' pessimism prevails? why not study this, for god's sake?
(637-638): marx's first systematic presentation of the industrialization of agricultural production is lacking, of course, but is interesting in ways that orthodox reproductions don't account for. for example, there is the emphasis on the spatial distribution of laborers as an explanation for the possibility of resistance--indeed, the way he traces the chronology of agglomeration, it might be argued that even the peasantry, if crowded appropriately, could be revolutionary. (yet, on second thought, there's much more to this issue than simply space--it is, of course, to marxism's credit that it has a more robust explanation for what makes the urban working-class revolutionary (i.e,. the utterly inhuman (and painfully clear) hierarchies of the factory floor, and the invariably collective character of the demands that follow)). yet, even still, there remains room for playing with this aspect of the passage. secondly, even more interestingly, marx here introduces the concept of the 'metabolic rift,' emphasized by bellamy-foster. he hints at its future resolution, but all that he writes otherwise clarifies his interest in ecology, and capitalism's unavoidable irrationality in this respect. all this, it scarcely needs to be said, is a critical rejoinder to soviet developmentalism.
chapter 15: machinery and large-scale industry
sections 6-10
(566): nominibus mollire licet mala -- "it is proper to lighten evils with words" (ovid)
(568-569): in this critique of the bourgeois economists, marx alludes to an understanding of machinery as emancipatory, providing that its implementation is not overseen by capitalism. this does, though, leave open many questions about how a socialist society implements machinery. is it gradual? if it's gradual how does it remain competitive? how is it not alienating? etc., etc.
(571): the advent of cotton-spinning "promote[d], as if in a hot house, the growing of cotton in the United States, and with it the African Slave Trade." an example, if one was needed, of the way in which capitalism intensified slavery, rather than simply succeeding it. (in 1790, 697,000 slaves in US; in 1861, four million).
(571-572): a bit about the demands of the wool industry and the consequent conversion of arable land into pasture for sheep, which is critical precisely because, as sayre argued, it demonstrates that little is 'natural' (as in, outside of history). or, better put, nature has to be understood historically; in this case, the relation of man to land (in this case, the de-population of rural areas) cannot be understood outside of technological advance and new systems of production. in other words, man, in england and ireland, did not meet natural limits, but limits imposed upon nature by specific histories of 'progress'.
(574): in essence, section 6 responds to those apologists who see in machinery the means by which more and more employment will be made available to laboreres (as, in short, machinery stimulates general economic growth). marx's response is unequivocal: by and large, this stimulation is negligible. there will be further growth, he admits, but this will be insignificant in relation to the general impact of machinery on labor, as well as itself being prey to the later impact of machinery (as in, if machine implementation in one branch of industry stimulates another, we can still expect it to be a matter of time before machinery pervades the latter). he ends, then, with an interesting summary of recent, contemporary growth of the servant class in industrial britain, which has relevance for third world nations today, of course. for if it truly is the case that machinery requires a "larger and larger part of the working class to be employed unproductively," (can we think of the service sector in these terms?) then it is impossible to understand the plight of the current servant classes of the third world without recourse to 'labor-saving' technology. in other words, marx's attentiveness to this question of the relationship between technology and labor absorption should make us critically aware in the present: is it possible to imagine a way to limit technological advance so as to deal with the far more relatively numerous masses in the homes and kitchens of the indigenous bourgeoisie in the third world? how will this be accomplished, while still being competitive to the extent of being sustainable? are these the right questions?
(577): "finally, we have considered this question entirely apart from the fact that everywhere, except in the metallurgical industries, young persons (under 18), women and children form by far the most preponderant element in the factory personnel"--this is the critical 'other side' of the story of the industrial revolution, and neglected, i think, in accounts of women's liberation that give explanatory power to WWII. what did this mean for women's liberation? specifically, why was it the case that this large-scale employment of women did not result, in england, in a consciousness of liberation in the way that it did in america during WW2? of course there's a lot of history that i have yet to learn about both... (namely, what is the story of the english women's movement and its relation to industrial capitalism? what was the role of women in the US industrial revolution (the mills in massachusetts, for example)?)
(578): once more, a martial metaphor to explain industrial competition.
(579): marx, again, was fully aware of the gutting of india's handicraft cotton production, and its conversion into a site for producing raw material (cotton, wool, hemp, jute, indigo).
(579-580): quite standard development of underdevelopment narrative; in other words, quite clearly a dialectical (not linear) narrative of how capitalism advances.
(582): here, marx draws a link between the global extension of capitalism and the frequency of crisis. in other words, there seems to be a link between the scope of the capitalist market--the space over which it has expanded--and the frequency (and clarity) of the crises that afflict it. this, no doubt, is properly theorized in harvey and others. but we can add that it is probably not so much the fact that space is a source of new contradictions (indeed, harvey suggests that expansion into as-yet virgin areas is often the 'fix'), but rather that it is a vehicle for the consolidation of market relations (which clarifies, in a real sense, the dynamics producing crisis).
(588, fn 67): something made clear throughout this chapter is that the fact that the decreasing rate of surplus value must be compensated by absolute increases in capitalist production (by increases in the mass of surplus value) gives capitalism its relentlessly expansive character. innovation must happen, but alongside expansion. both are, simultaneously, survival strategies for individual and system.
(588-589): marx comments here on the way in which specific technical innovations undo certain divisions of labor pioneered in the manufacturing/handicraft era. he uses the example of adam smith, and his example of ten men making sewing-needles. the general importance of this passage, i suggest, is that it raises again the question of how machinery imposes objective requirements on the organization of production, which are of a quite different nature from the divisions of labor that preceded them. in other words, it is wrong to see, as feldstein via smith implied, that the progressively more extensive division of labor is the driver of increased productivity--rather, machinery intervenes in a quite decisive way, disrupting what is a very alluring linear story to reveal contradictions (advances with retreats). (see also 590, where marx writes about how the 'new division of labor' requires exclusively 'cheap labor' (i.e., women and children), quite in contrast to the 'old division of labor' in the handicrafts and even manufacture).
(593): "they become rough, foulmouthed boys, before Nature has taught them that they are women"--i suppose this is excusable, given context and intent.
(596): again, an explicit critique of the linear liberal.
(597): here, in the employment of child labor, we remember the contingency of the definition of childhood. in other words, appraising the dialectical relationship of environment (i.e., the factory) to the underlying biology is crucial to understanding the mendacity of 'capitalist anthropology'. (see also 599, where sociobiology can make little sense of parents pushing their children into brutal forms of employment).
(601): marx's argument, derived from the calculus he establishes for deciding on the efficacy of machinery, is that, in any given industry, there comes a point when increasing productivity through cheating labor, employing women/children, etc., is no longer viable (largely because demand has become so extensive). instead, capitalists turn to the machine. one question, in response, is how does this match on to the argument that the machine itself facilitates the entrance of women/children (he later clarifies some complexity, in that young children are removed but "the new machine-minders are exclusively girls and young women"? but i think that is a historical question, which requires one only to look more carefully at the chronology of their entry, rather than a theoretical conundrum. secondly, there seems to be an underlying dynamic of capital accumulation involved; in other words, you need a certain amount of capital to be able to invest in whole-scale transformation of production; a amount of disposable capital that may not be available in immature industries.
(601): again, looking to the past to better understand the present: "the fearful increase in death from starvation during the last ten years in london runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing"
(604): an important passage on the unsteadiness governing the transition from pre-factory forms to the factory system. specifically, marx here is arguing that the uneven implementation of the factory system in various branches of industry, affects dramatically (in a way that makes more inhumane) the non-factory forms of production that are linked to this technical advance. in other words, much like capitalism seizes on pre-capitalist forms and transforms them, here the factory form of production exacerbates the madness of pre-factory forms. in this way, the ascent of the factory system is accompanied by "a totally changed and disorganized" series of non-factory forms of production, which themselves "overdo all the horrors of the factory system." there is a lingering question about how to judge this transition, as marx seems to be arguing that the transitional forms are "worst" (not unlike slavery under capitalism, i suppose).
(604-605): argument here is fairly straightforward, yet important for legislation to check the excesses of contemporary capitalisms in the third world. in essence, marx is suggesting that the factory acts hastened the mechanization of production, insofar as they prohibited manufacture/domestic industry from the quick fixes of "unlimited exploitation of cheap labor-power." to compete, they had to raise productivity by the books. this has interesting consequences, when extrapolated to the case of child labor in the third world; insofar as it is true that more smaller factories/workplaces sustain these practices than larger ones (how true?), one can imagine proper legislation facilitating the concentration of capital in the hands of larger-scale industry (made explicit by marx in a passage on page 607). this dynamic, of course, has its own consequences. (anyway i think all this requires more empirical investigation, before it can be applied to explain today).
(607): a need to discipline the worker--to wean him from his "irregular habits"
(608): this is important, precisely because it prefigures what is done far too infrequently when studying "booms & busts"--namely, looking at crises from the eyes of labor, and assessing their consequences thusly.
(612): the earlier point about bourgeois legality being unable to regulate the internal order of a factory here resurfaces (and this quite aside from questions of autocracy at work). here marx offers an example of the impossibility of regulating the architecture of production: the factory acts could not re-organize the spatial structures of production, lest they "strike at the very roots of the capitalist mode of production," which is really it's freedom to purchase and consume labor-power in whatever way it pleases. put differently, the spatiality of this freedom here becomes important, insofar as it seems "impossible to impose [any] rule on capital" in this regard. in a sense, the contradiction immanent in the dual freedom of labor (the freedom to dispose of him/herself, but also the freeing of him/her from the means of production) here reappears as a contradiction in the legality of productive activity: the bourgeoisie claim the latter in the form of their property rights, yet thereby expose the fallacy of the former, insofar labor is revealed to be thoroughly subordinate to capital's will. "between equal rights, force decides."
(617): there's a dynamism to modern industry, marx is arguing, that is not present in all previous modes of production. whereas those were "essentially conservative," modern industry cannot survive without constantly "transforming not only the technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process." this is of course important to the chronological questions of early industrial britain (progressive de-skilling, for example), aside from being wholly true with respect to the madness of contemporary capitalism. again, dialectics, not linearity. BUT, critically, marx here, in one of those rare moments, hints at what socialist harnessing of large-scale industry would achieve. at the bottom, he writes of how capitalism channels the dynamism required by industry (the "fluidity of functions, the mobility of the worker") into a form that does away with "all fixity and security" for the worker. the challenge for socialism, then, is this: how to organize production in large-scale industry such that the mobility is emancipating, rather than exploitative (there is, of course, the ecological challenge, but that's quite separate). all this is made explicit on page 618, where marx writes directly (well, almost) of the "partially developed individual" being replaced by "the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions [required by large-scale industry] are different modes of activity he takes up in turn."
(619): more of the same attempt to prefigure socialist organization of production--and indeed, a making explicit of the dialectical approach: no necessary connection, in other words, between industry and alienation. in fact, it proves, on this account, a necessary condition for emancipation.
(620): quoting children's employment comission of 1866 (for the sociobiologists): "against no persons do the children of both sexes so much require protection as against their parents."
(621): toward a "higher form of the family:" again, an excellent explication of a concrete issue in which we can both lament the loss of all that is "fixed and frozen" (as is critical) without fearing the future (as is necessary).
(621): "since here the worker exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the worker."
(621): clarifying chronology: factory acts enable general transition to machine-system, simultaneously heightening (in a real sense) the misery of those branches of industry left unregulated (domestic industry, manufacture, handicrafts).
(625-626): of course, in noting the disjuncture between what's enshrined in the letter of the law and what applies, marx (or engels, in this case) registers the classic contradiction of battles over the integrity of laws. indeed, we need to look no further than the UN declaration of human rights.
(635): a key passage, especially as regards the question of the revolutionary potential of the informal working-class. because here marx is tracing the increasing revolutionary capacities of the industrial working-class to the obliteration of spatially isolated small-scale workshops (those "ancient and transitional forms"). as this concentration of workers replaces the prevailing "partially hidden dominion of capital" with an awareness of what exactly workers ought to hold against this world, it "generalizes the direct struggle." it should be clear, though, that none of these conditions exist in the contemporary third world in any significant capacity. in that sense, fanon's command to concentrate on the peasantry needs to be re-issued, today, in the form of a demand to understand and organize the informal sector (the lumpen sectors). what remains to be studied, of course, are the imperfections of this general narrative; are there any ways in which the modern conjuncture opens up as-yet-unforseen possibilities of revolt? or is it really true that davis' pessimism prevails? why not study this, for god's sake?
(637-638): marx's first systematic presentation of the industrialization of agricultural production is lacking, of course, but is interesting in ways that orthodox reproductions don't account for. for example, there is the emphasis on the spatial distribution of laborers as an explanation for the possibility of resistance--indeed, the way he traces the chronology of agglomeration, it might be argued that even the peasantry, if crowded appropriately, could be revolutionary. (yet, on second thought, there's much more to this issue than simply space--it is, of course, to marxism's credit that it has a more robust explanation for what makes the urban working-class revolutionary (i.e,. the utterly inhuman (and painfully clear) hierarchies of the factory floor, and the invariably collective character of the demands that follow)). yet, even still, there remains room for playing with this aspect of the passage. secondly, even more interestingly, marx here introduces the concept of the 'metabolic rift,' emphasized by bellamy-foster. he hints at its future resolution, but all that he writes otherwise clarifies his interest in ecology, and capitalism's unavoidable irrationality in this respect. all this, it scarcely needs to be said, is a critical rejoinder to soviet developmentalism.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Monday, May 7, 2007
on housework:
Beneath my friend’s seeming envy that day lay a profound skepticism. She didn’t genuinely believe I was lucky. Sure, she’d like to not have to do quite so much of the housework herself, but a male partner doing it - unless following strict and very detailed instructions - is completely out of the question. A man in the 21st century who knows where the vacuum cleaner bags are, or understands how to programme the washing machine is still an object of deep suspicion. It’s not natural, and it’s certainly not manly.
(...) As Madeline Bunting pointed out in a recent article in The Guardian, despite all the apparent progress in equal opportunities, society has never thought about redefining men’s roles. Women are allowed, in theory, to be equal with men, but only if they become more like men. Nobody ever suggests that men should change to become more like women - and why would they, when feminine = inferior?
(...) Often these kinds of household disputes seem to be solved by employing outside help - in effect, a paid wife for both the man and woman. But this only masks the problem rather than addressing it: employing someone - almost always a woman - at ridiculously low wages is just another way of expressing how inferior a woman’s ‘natural’ role really is when compared with the important male world of work and career.
(...) Early feminism tried to liberate women from housework and domestic chores, but what Betty Friedan and co forgot to point out was that some things, whether or not they are boring or menial or dirty, whether cooking, cleaning, washing, tidying, mending or child-rearing, will always need to be done. Saying that they are not worthy of women’s time hasn’t yet changed who does them; it has just ensured that the general perception of anyone - man or women - who does housework is entirely negative.
Beneath my friend’s seeming envy that day lay a profound skepticism. She didn’t genuinely believe I was lucky. Sure, she’d like to not have to do quite so much of the housework herself, but a male partner doing it - unless following strict and very detailed instructions - is completely out of the question. A man in the 21st century who knows where the vacuum cleaner bags are, or understands how to programme the washing machine is still an object of deep suspicion. It’s not natural, and it’s certainly not manly.
(...) As Madeline Bunting pointed out in a recent article in The Guardian, despite all the apparent progress in equal opportunities, society has never thought about redefining men’s roles. Women are allowed, in theory, to be equal with men, but only if they become more like men. Nobody ever suggests that men should change to become more like women - and why would they, when feminine = inferior?
(...) Often these kinds of household disputes seem to be solved by employing outside help - in effect, a paid wife for both the man and woman. But this only masks the problem rather than addressing it: employing someone - almost always a woman - at ridiculously low wages is just another way of expressing how inferior a woman’s ‘natural’ role really is when compared with the important male world of work and career.
(...) Early feminism tried to liberate women from housework and domestic chores, but what Betty Friedan and co forgot to point out was that some things, whether or not they are boring or menial or dirty, whether cooking, cleaning, washing, tidying, mending or child-rearing, will always need to be done. Saying that they are not worthy of women’s time hasn’t yet changed who does them; it has just ensured that the general perception of anyone - man or women - who does housework is entirely negative.
feminism and rape:
I walked along my university corridor last week and was drawn to a poster on the wall; it consisted of a woman with a beer in her hand looking a little worse for wear. Behind her an aggressive looking male towered above. The caption read: “Are you making yourself vulnerable?”.
(...) In addition, what message is this sending out to men? They are constantly portrayed as would be perpetrators of violence, with supposedly no control over their actions.
(...) Women should dress appropriately, we should be careful about where we leave our drinks. We must make sure we get into a properly licensed cab. What about the actual perpetrators? What is happening to them?
(...) Isn’t it about time that we saw more advertisements and campaigns aimed at the perpetrators of violence and more work done to prevent, predominantly men, growing up assuming they can have this control over women? During 2004/5 there were 13,322 reported rapes of women to the police, two thirds of these don’t go any further than the police stage (www.rapecrisis.org.uk/stats) . The worrying statistics of late is that its estimated for every rape that occurs only 1% are convicted because so little are reported in the first place and of that few only a minority go on to conviction.
I walked along my university corridor last week and was drawn to a poster on the wall; it consisted of a woman with a beer in her hand looking a little worse for wear. Behind her an aggressive looking male towered above. The caption read: “Are you making yourself vulnerable?”.
(...) In addition, what message is this sending out to men? They are constantly portrayed as would be perpetrators of violence, with supposedly no control over their actions.
(...) Women should dress appropriately, we should be careful about where we leave our drinks. We must make sure we get into a properly licensed cab. What about the actual perpetrators? What is happening to them?
(...) Isn’t it about time that we saw more advertisements and campaigns aimed at the perpetrators of violence and more work done to prevent, predominantly men, growing up assuming they can have this control over women? During 2004/5 there were 13,322 reported rapes of women to the police, two thirds of these don’t go any further than the police stage (www.rapecrisis.org.uk/stats) . The worrying statistics of late is that its estimated for every rape that occurs only 1% are convicted because so little are reported in the first place and of that few only a minority go on to conviction.
hair and feminism:
Is hair still a feminist issue? One that divides the women from the girls? There is no biological or hygienic reason for women to remove body hair, yet most of us do. But it is such a powerful cultural expectation to do so, it is rarely challenged these days. To break it and be hairy is regarded as taboo, extreme, Andrea Dworkin-esque. If you are hairy, you are regarded as unclean, lazy, a witch, the most extreme kind of feminist in an era when any kind of feminist is regarded with deep suspicion. Can we be feminist and feminine? Can we tolerate a contradiction, acknowledging that the culture of hair removal is oppressive, absurd and possibly racist (Asian women being more susceptible to excessive dark face and body hair - see Shilpa Shetty and the facial bleach incident in Celebrity Big Brother) yet admit that we feel more comfortable without it?
Is hair still a feminist issue? One that divides the women from the girls? There is no biological or hygienic reason for women to remove body hair, yet most of us do. But it is such a powerful cultural expectation to do so, it is rarely challenged these days. To break it and be hairy is regarded as taboo, extreme, Andrea Dworkin-esque. If you are hairy, you are regarded as unclean, lazy, a witch, the most extreme kind of feminist in an era when any kind of feminist is regarded with deep suspicion. Can we be feminist and feminine? Can we tolerate a contradiction, acknowledging that the culture of hair removal is oppressive, absurd and possibly racist (Asian women being more susceptible to excessive dark face and body hair - see Shilpa Shetty and the facial bleach incident in Celebrity Big Brother) yet admit that we feel more comfortable without it?
Saturday, May 5, 2007
feminism, and not the backlash:
Crack open Susan Faludi's classic on the backlash against feminism in the 80s, and you'll see variations of that argument in every aspect of the backlash pressure. From the fashion industry to the right wing noise machine's arguments about "natural" gender roles, Faludi detailed how proponents of the backlash endlessly argued that women are supposedly happier being more feminine and helpless, happier at home with babies, and happier without being in the male world of the rat race. The argument that women feel more empowered shaking their ass in lingerie than in drawing that man-sized paycheck in the male-dominated rat race only differs from the 80s backlash on the surface. And yet it gets mistaken for "third wave feminism" all the time.
(...) [Liz Funk] characterized the freedom to go to clubs and drink as damaging and risky for women, particularly in terms of rape. The story left the same impression drawn by Laura Sessions Stepp, that the seeming gains of feminism have actually managed to hurt young women.
(...) By realistic measures, though, feminism has been anything but a tragedy for young women. Because of feminist gains, young women now make up more than half of the students in college. The gains are reflected in law and medical schools, which are also half female now. Girls' athletics have grown exponentially since the 70s because of Title IX. The worry over young women and sex is somewhat misplaced as well, especially considering the decline in teenage pregnancies throughout the 90s, a decline that was attributable to increased contraceptive use, a huge feminist goal.
(...) The notion that college age women are wasting their potential somehow by acting like nothing more than sex objects is paralleled neatly by the notion that the kindergarten set of girls that are supposedly rejecting their feminist parents in order to embrace the fluffy princess phenomenon, pushed mostly by the Disney company. In fact, the princess marketing has something of a "gotcha" element to it, as if the miles of pink and lace present an irresistible temptation for the inner delicate flowers of young girls. The more likely story is that the relentless drumbeat of marketing the Princess line has made girls feel that they're missing out if they aren't a part of it.
(...) The grown-up version of Disney's Princess line is the TV show "The Pussycat Dolls," where the symbol of belonging is not a pink lace princess dress, but a feather boa. Granted, the Pussycat Dolls are highly sexualized, but the marketing push is the same as the Princess line, the story being one about how women and girls find themselves irresistibly drawn away from participation in the real world and towards feminine accoutrements and being on display rather than being active. And these messages are coming, as they always have, from marketers that are more interested in protecting male privilege and making money than everything else. The co-option of words like "empowering" from feminists should be taken for what it is, a backlash wolf in feminist sheep clothing.
Crack open Susan Faludi's classic on the backlash against feminism in the 80s, and you'll see variations of that argument in every aspect of the backlash pressure. From the fashion industry to the right wing noise machine's arguments about "natural" gender roles, Faludi detailed how proponents of the backlash endlessly argued that women are supposedly happier being more feminine and helpless, happier at home with babies, and happier without being in the male world of the rat race. The argument that women feel more empowered shaking their ass in lingerie than in drawing that man-sized paycheck in the male-dominated rat race only differs from the 80s backlash on the surface. And yet it gets mistaken for "third wave feminism" all the time.
(...) [Liz Funk] characterized the freedom to go to clubs and drink as damaging and risky for women, particularly in terms of rape. The story left the same impression drawn by Laura Sessions Stepp, that the seeming gains of feminism have actually managed to hurt young women.
(...) By realistic measures, though, feminism has been anything but a tragedy for young women. Because of feminist gains, young women now make up more than half of the students in college. The gains are reflected in law and medical schools, which are also half female now. Girls' athletics have grown exponentially since the 70s because of Title IX. The worry over young women and sex is somewhat misplaced as well, especially considering the decline in teenage pregnancies throughout the 90s, a decline that was attributable to increased contraceptive use, a huge feminist goal.
(...) The notion that college age women are wasting their potential somehow by acting like nothing more than sex objects is paralleled neatly by the notion that the kindergarten set of girls that are supposedly rejecting their feminist parents in order to embrace the fluffy princess phenomenon, pushed mostly by the Disney company. In fact, the princess marketing has something of a "gotcha" element to it, as if the miles of pink and lace present an irresistible temptation for the inner delicate flowers of young girls. The more likely story is that the relentless drumbeat of marketing the Princess line has made girls feel that they're missing out if they aren't a part of it.
(...) The grown-up version of Disney's Princess line is the TV show "The Pussycat Dolls," where the symbol of belonging is not a pink lace princess dress, but a feather boa. Granted, the Pussycat Dolls are highly sexualized, but the marketing push is the same as the Princess line, the story being one about how women and girls find themselves irresistibly drawn away from participation in the real world and towards feminine accoutrements and being on display rather than being active. And these messages are coming, as they always have, from marketers that are more interested in protecting male privilege and making money than everything else. The co-option of words like "empowering" from feminists should be taken for what it is, a backlash wolf in feminist sheep clothing.
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